Escorts contrast to others

cruisin1500

Hey guys this isn't any traditional nerf them buff me thread. I was just wondering what are people's thoughts on these ships from those of you who fly at least two of them whether on the same character or a different character for a different ship.

For me I stayed in escorts for the whole time on two characters just in different careers. A different career doesn't really alter your play style as much as a different class of ship. Then eventually I used a science ship dkyr as a healer in PvP.

Recently came back to the game and decided to go with a new career and ship class and chose science in both cases. It has been fun using the science ship, I'm a romulan and I use the hanom. Of course I can never expect to do damage like an escort. ExperIenced science ship captains acknowledge that it is just something we cannot even come close to doing.

For those of you who have played escorts and use cruisers and science ships as well, which is your favorite ship? Which one do you find yourself spending most of your time on? If the escort can you say why? If a science ship or cruiser can you say why?

I know in Pve content persons used to (I don't know about now) fly mostly escorts especially where the Borg Stf were concerned due to time requirements for mission completion. It was the only way to go and if you ever found yourself in an all cruiser team or something it was just painful.

So I switched back to my escort today on a different character to farm some Pve quickly like kerat for my science guy, since I don't have much ec. Being able to take out groups of ships with cannon scatter volley and photon spread is just unbeatable. So I'm wondering if anyone else sticks to a cruiser or science ship no matter what or if you switch out to do things such as I mentioned.

Of course a science ship is invaluable on any team. Using gw3 and drawing large groups of enemy together for your escort wingman to pound with csv and pts just finishes large groups so much quicker, like the voth. But sometimes don't you just find yourself as a cruiser or science ship especially if you are alone a little frustrated. As a solo ship is the science ship or cruiser fairly almost painful in cases such as against the voth in the Dyson sphere.

With my escort if no help is around I solo a group by buffing flying in taking out the frigates, back out, in and take out the cruiser and then the battle ship. Due to the speed maneuverability and firepower this process isn't too slow with the escort and is rather fun.

But I can't do the same on the science ship, it of course just isn't fast enough to get in and stay in long enough to do anything meaningful by it self. The defence bonus and overall defense rating significantly contributes to the hit and run solo tactic if I'm attacking towers by myself. But the science ship just takes a heavy pounding and can't handle it.

It should be mentioned my equipment is fairly poor on the sci. Any science ships who solo the voth groups when no support is around mind giving me some advice on how. I think k my main issue is that I am so experienced in an escort I am having great difficulty utilizing the science ship. And adapting to its style. Any advice on how it's done by experienced science captains would be welcome.

I want so much to learn this play style because I like it and find it fun, but only find it frustrating because clearly I'm not equally as adept at it as with an escort. The escort is imo far easier to master than the science or cruiser.

I know a better err build once I get ec will solve some of my issues, but still looking for the advice in strategy and experience from you experienced capital ship captains. Possibly also what engines are best for us to use. As I think k right now I get like 66 speed at ful impulse. Didn't realize it was so slow till I logged back on the escort and realized how fast it can zip across the Dyson sphere.

Thanks in advance.

szerontzur

I think escorts are probably the easiest to do well in with a minimal skillset. At their core, they're pretty direct and simple craft - point ship at target, fire pew pews until it dies. However, a 'good' escort actually does require a good bit of technical skill and and mechanical knowledge to really shine.

Cruisers.. offer new players a lot of breathing room for mistakes, but they tend to flounder about unless you really start investing in a build. Once properly.. 'broken in'.. cruisers are quite monstrous.

Science Ships.. are probably the least friendly ship to newer players. It's very easy to be deadweight flying one unless you become extremely specialized and invest the time needed to fully understanding the mechanics.

Raiders have the difficulty curve of an over-hanging cliff. There's a lot of cross-learning between raiders and escorts, but the former has no margin for error.

Carriers are a micro-management and multitasking dream/nightmare. Good if you enjoy doing and keeping track of a lot of things at once. Bad if prefer to focus on a singular thing at a time.


Personally, I like different ships for different reasons, but have a hard time basing judgements on the generalizations of them - a Corsair is quite different from a Regent.

If you're struggling, stop and ask "What is this ship good at it", and then "Is that something I (can) enjoy?" Science ships generally specialize in two roles: Flow Capacitor drain(shields and/or power) builds, or Particle Generator exotic damage builds. Everything else about them is usually supplemental and secondary to those foci.

mcherub

Having several characters and several different ships, I personally enjoy cruisers and science ships. Cruisers because of their sheer number of weapons and durability. Also since they added cruiser commands they got even better. However, using a cruiser has its drawbacks as they pretty much have to be geared up with a purpose in mind. Also, not all cruisers are built the same, unlike escorts which are pretty much all very similar, and science vessels also seem to be pretty similar. Some cruisers are geared more towards a tactical slant, most are built for engineering, while a couple have a slight science slant. So depending on the role and play style, cruisers can serve their purpose, but they are not dps kings and far from it. A good build and player can tweak the dps, and compete, but generally their dps is from simply not dieing as fast.

I personally enjoy my science focused ships, but not necessarily all science ships. My main is a science romulan, who on the ground is a healer, but in space I go for more dps, than actual crowd control. For a long time I ran around in a scimitar with a power drain build. This worked well, and I could survive some stuff and kill things, however to be honest, since season eight and acquiring a time ship, I have really kicked up my dps a lot compared to when flying the dreadnought. Now most people say that escorts do a lot of dmg, and this might be true in pvp, but I don't pvp and the few times I have dialed someone, I found the hardest dual was against an engineer who was designed to survive stuff while dishing things out.

Anyways, since I have started sticking and tweaking my science ship for pve, I have found that I do a lot of dps, and can often clear groups solo faster than other groups do when done as duo's or trio's. Form example I can often clear two groups of tholians in cult ensnared in the time it takes for two people to clear one group, simply by using gravity well 3 and the confuse, plus several other abilitys and skills. Recently my favorite combination on my reman science in a ha'nom is to combine gw3 with the subspace rupture console for the leaching lockbox. This combo is really nice at grouping things up and they can't escape the gw3 because their speed is reduced and weapons are offline, the. When the rupture collapses I pop the aoe confuse so they spend another 30 seconds shooting at each other.

Also I should point out that my build is focused on a higher auxiliary. My romulan science in the time ship with all the buffs runs at around 104 weapons and 100 aux, with rally low engines and low shields. I also have a plasmonic leech consol that helps offset some of the low power levels, and I gain extra power for using emergency power abilities. I was using emergency to aux and energy siphon and was able to hit 135 aux before tossing out a gw3. I recently swapped those out so I am not hitting as high an aux, but it hasn't really hindered the dmg as much now that I swapped to emergency power to weapons which gives me a dmg bonus plus still some bonus power levels.

Anyways back on topic, the escorts definitely do a lot of damage but they honest feel to straight forward and squishy whe compared to the other types of ships that require some planning and thought to make really effective. I do enjoy my tac for time to time in a kumari, and it was quick to level with the direct dmg ships. It just feels more rewarding to outperform others in pugs on my harder to pump out the dps ships. Just today I took my brand new lvl 50 reman science in green and blue my 10 and 11's into the crystal entity and scored first place on the first attempt in their on that character, only dieing once whe. The crystal was under 20% and only just because everything was simply on cooldowm.

lilchibiclari

The escort's main weakness, IMO, is that, barring the threat reduction console that any ship type can use, it has no means to "shed" threat in order to convince the enemy to go after a team's tanks instead. This means that an escort captain is prevented from using the full extent of the escort's main strength (its forward-facing DPS) and has to stop shooting if the tanks aren't generating enough threat.

Now, any ability that would allow the escort captain to force a large amount of threat onto a teammate would be a non-starter and a recipe for griefers, so that's out. The issue at stake is that all of the threat-shedding abilities currently available are either console powers (e.g. Antimatter Spread) or Science abilities. What we need is a Tactical-slotted ability that can either prevent the generation of threat by the user for a few (5-15) seconds, or else provide a Placate effect (or even just a Placate effect towards the user if not towards all of the user's team). Make it an Attack Pattern and make it share the 15-second global cooldown with all of the other attack patterns--this would require players to make an opportunity-cost trade-off while still increasing the range of options.

rylanadionysis

Escorts require skill and reflexes to fly well, especially in PvP.

galanis2814

I fly a good variety of ships, changing it up pretty regularly. Escorts aren't glass but there is a definite difference in the feel of combat in a Khyzon, say, versus an A2B beam boat. Sometimes you do get more hate than you can handle in PvE, especially when just gearing up. My "threat dump" tactic is just to evasive out of range and heal a bit, that will allow a great deal of catch-up.

Overall I think the game is actually pretty well balanced right now, compared to a year ago. Cruisers are way more viable in all areas of gameplay, tanking is something that skilled players can actually do.

My biggest "complaint" is that both Escorts and most cruiser builds can be keybound so thoroughly as to negate the need to do much more than spam a hotkey. It is much more engaging to have some science abilities in the mix, in my opinion.

sunfrancks

rylanadionysis wrote: »

Escorts require skill and reflexes to fly well, especially in PvP.

Yup, id say cruisers with FAW spam are the ships that require the least skill needed to do damage, currently..

aveimperator

Please tell me more about how Escorts require skill.

Also, LOL @ all your Escort jocks whining and crying about FAW "spam." So sad that Cruiser have actually found a way to do decent DPS and actually kill you. Must be broken, cheesy, spam...must be...

the1tigglet

cruisin1500 wrote: »

But sometimes don't you just find yourself as a cruiser or science ship especially if you are alone a little frustrated. As a solo ship is the science ship or cruiser fairly almost painful in cases such as against the voth in the Dyson sphere.

This exactly this.

Pretty much sums up the problems with science ships/career. Imagine if you will that almost ALL of your skills are useless for years and then suddenly they only fix 2. That's what's happening with science career/ships right now.

They have done 0 to fix any of the other CC or strat skills and what makes it worse are skills from the races they have loaded thru content is somehow unknown to fed scientists but available on the market on consoles for real life money!

That's what added the insult to injury for me it needs a major overhaul!

aveimperator

the1tigglet wrote: »

This exactly this.

Pretty much sums up the problems with science ships/career. Imagine if you will that almost ALL of your skills are useless for years and then suddenly they only fix 2. That's what's happening with science career/ships right now.

They have done 0 to fix any of the other CC or strat skills and what makes it worse are skills from the races they have loaded thru content is somehow unknown to fed scientists but available on the market on consoles for real life money!

That's what added the insult to injury for me it needs a major overhaul!

Those CC skills you speak of were nerfed and will never bix "fixed" because they were killing Escorts in PvP. Clearly OP and obviously bugged.

rylanadionysis

aveimperator wrote: »

Please tell me more about how Escorts require skill.

Also, LOL @ all your Escort jocks whining and crying about FAW "spam." So sad that Cruiser have actually found a way to do decent DPS and actually kill you. Must be broken, cheesy, spam...must be...

You have 45 degrees to put onto a moving target, often a very very fast moving target (doubly so if youre fast yourself). You actually have to line your shot up and time your buffs to coincide with that window of opportunity.

With a faw boat you can just brainlessly click things and things happen, you dont even have to steer.

I know this for a fact because I play three escorts, three faw boats, a torp boat raider, and not sure what my 8th is gonna be yet. All flight styles. The fawboats are nowhere near as tricky to fly and do things with. In fact when I am tired or feeling like being lazy I log in Victoria or Shondra, because I know I wont have to do much to do what needs doing.

Pretty sure I am replying to a troll post but I will leave that here for now.

induperator

rylanadionysis wrote: »

You have 45 degrees to put onto a moving target, often a very very fast moving target (doubly so if youre fast yourself). You actually have to line your shot up and time your buffs to coincide with that window of opportunity.

With a faw boat you can just brainlessly click things and things happen, you dont even have to steer.

I know this for a fact because I play three escorts, three faw boats, a torp boat raider, and not sure what my 8th is gonna be yet. All flight styles. The fawboats are nowhere near as tricky to fly and do things with. In fact when I am tired or feeling like being lazy I log in Victoria or Shondra, because I know I wont have to do much to do what needs doing.

Pretty sure I am replying to a troll post but I will leave that here for now.

Escorts don't require much skill either I mean in PVEs Cannon Boats just sit there and Spam the space bar and everything is melted in that 45 degree Arc I know because I use a DHC build and whether it's Borg or Voth or Tholians everything Melts in that small Arc and as for maneuverability Cruisers have much lower inertia and Turn rate they need a skilled pilot to maneuver them successfully and Escorts are a breeze to Pilot because they respond so easily and quickly but this is all my opinion to some Cruisers are easy to pilot and to others they are difficult to pilot and to Escort Captains some might find them easy or difficult to pilot it's all personal prefrence.

I'm not Biased towards Cruisers or Escorts or Science Ships I use all of them and they all have good and bad points but personally I think it's good Beams got a Buff. This is a game where DPS is King so Escorts would almost always be superior this means that there is a reason to use cruisers again I'm not saying Cruisers or Escorts should be superior but I only ask that people look at this from an objective point of view I mean to a Cruiser captain this gives them an Advantage they've lacked, to Escort Captains it might seem unfair that Cruisers have such high damage because Escorts should naturally be the most offensive you said Cruisers just sit and destroy everything so do lots of Escorts people Pilot and play differently.